Why Saints Row Is Better Than GTA

With GTA V all but unanimously praised as a masterpiece by critics and selling a staggering 130 million copies as of May 2020 (not to mention the profits perpetually generated by GTA Online), Rockstar proved they are still the masters of creating stunningly detailed worlds for us to play in.

Tiny details such as cars leaking fuel if shot in the right place, flip-flops that actually flip and flop, and cuts and bruises that appear on your character after they take a beating all add to the verisimilitude of Rockstar’s Los Santos that further immerses players within this elaborate world.

But this dedication to realism ultimately works to GTA’s disadvantage.

In a game where players can plan and execute heists in spectacular set-pieces and, in another mission, pilot a crop duster into the hold of a military cargo plane, players are also required to complete more mundane tasks like work in a cargo dock and engage with the uninteresting and inaccessible stock and property markets to acquire extra funds.

In GTA Online, players will even need to purchase car insurance so that their slick wheels aren't lost forever when another player decides to bomb it to oblivion.

Something which is guaranteed to happen.

Rockstar’s obsession for quasi-realism creates a huge juxtaposition between high-octane action and the tediously banal to immersion-breaking effect.

The best example to illustrate this contrast comes in the mission “Did Someone Say Yoga?” in which you (playing as Michael) are forced into participating in your wife’s yoga class.

The next ten minutes will be spent positioning analogue sticks and pressing the left and right triggers to breathe in a variety of poses. Then, after Michael gets into a fight with the instructor, you have the joy of driving your spoiled son to meet his drug dealer at the local burger place.

It’s only after trudging through this checklist of objectives does this mission finally gets interesting at which point Michael, drugged by his son, hallucinates being abducted by aliens and skydives in his boxers back down to Earth in a psychedelic frenzy.

This is the stylish insanity that makes GTA fantastic, not mind-numbing yoga activities that drag you out of the action and back to reality.